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The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up

Investigate the Sea?

  • Yes

    Votes: 593 80.4%

  • No

    Votes: 145 19.6%
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    738
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Valinor's forces are devastated but they still have a lot of sacrifice fuel. There will be a lot of Archangyls summoned.
 
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Honeypot Lily
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    • Honeypot Lily

    The Honeypot Lily is perhaps one the most beautiful flowers to be found upon Avernus. It is also surprisingly unlethal - By itself, that is.

    The distinctive flowers of the Honeypot Lily, typically a vibrant and distinctive yellow-white, but occasionally of other colors, have in their base an exceptionally nutritous nectar useful and desired by just about every Avernite species, including Blink Spiders - The nectar, consumed, soothes the soul, making it highly desirable for ordinary human consumption as well.

    Of course, this simply means that where Honeypot Lilies can be found, numerous threats can also be found. The enterprising honeypot farmer is certain to find him or herself overwhelmed by numerous and heightened attacks by various Avernite Species desiring the nectar of the Honeypot Lily - The fate of Brittz Mortz, who suffered an estimated 13 Blink Spider bites in his attempt to cultivate the plant, is an abject lesson on the matter.

    @Durin

    Any changes you'd make?
     
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    • If random abomination planet does decide to summon a bunch of demons can't we just pull out of that planet and attack another one? since demons, especially the powerful ones, take a lot sacrifice upkeep to keep around causing the world to either sacrifice more men to keep the demons around or be forced to resummon the demons when we come back for round 2. Like do demons not work like this or is there something else wrong with the plan?
     
    vsh said:
    Valinor's forces are devastated but they still have a lot of sacrifice fuel. There will be a lot of Archangyls summoned.
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    I'd guess 5th Circle ones at best - they had to make a deal in advance to be able to summon the 3rd and 1st Circle ones, and Valinor has no doubt lost a lot of favor with the Star Father which will mean that they're not going to get nearly the same bang for their buck out of summoning rituals. They've also got the problem that most, if not all, of their psykers died attacking Avernus, which means they won't have many sorcerers available to conduct rituals to summon angyls in the first place.
     
    vsh said:
    But on the hive worlds they've got a lot more bucks for the bang.
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    Yes and no.

    The bottleneck is going to be how many rituals they can have going (due to sorcerer numbers) rather than the total sacrifice numbers. If they only have enough sorcerers to process, say, 2000 sacrifices per hour, the fact that 2000 sacrifices buys them a quarter of the Angyls than it did before is quite relevant. The fact that the sorcerers themselves being low-skill might also nerf the exchange rate (as well as maximum sustainable throughput).

    Plus, per Durin, there's a maximum capacity of number/power of daemons that can be supported at a given location that's also much lower in a non Warp-touched world, so they won't be able to stockpile Angyls indefinitely.
     
    Doomed Wombat said:
    Apparently it isn't that easy.
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    which I've always found weird. demon worlds seem to only happen to imperial worlds, almost never worlds held by chaotic empires. You'd think if it could be done to a world held by a hostile power it would be easier to do to a world you control. Though maybe changing ownership of the world is needed or the limiting factor is if the ruinous powers have the spare power to pull a planet through.
     
    random_npc said:
    which I've always found weird. demon worlds seem to only happen to imperial worlds, almost never worlds held by chaotic empires. You'd think if it could be done to a world held by a hostile power it would be easier to do to a world you control. Though maybe changing ownership of the world is needed or the limiting factor is if the ruinous powers have the spare power to pull a planet through.
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    Its not that it only happens to Imperial worlds, its more that they're the only ones we hear about if you play 40K straight.

    A thing to clarify in 40k normally Daemon worlds outside of a permanent chaos storm are not especially common, mostly cause anyone trying tends to get swarmed by angry Inquisitors. I get the feeling they're much more common now.

    Anyhow in general I found that finding Daemon worlds is more common outside of the Imperium's borders when I played Rogue Trader/DH hybrid.

    This could be chaos asses going off to make their own, chaos corrupted xenos empires doing it, or sometimes reasons we never really figured out...though TBF most of the previous two were also guess work as well.

    Another limiting factor tends to be leadership as well, chaos worlds that are outside of a storm (if they're in one then they're either ne by default or soon will be) tend to be hotly contested by different factions and religious affiliations so Daemoninying the world is usually protested by at least one group of people, Daemon worlds are very hostile to just about everything as a norm, but this applies doubly so to a Tzeenchian pirate who doesn't want to find their safe harbour's been taken over by Nurgle while they were off raiding. Unsurprisingly Dark Mech worlds tend to be "best" for going Daemon ASAP, presumably they realise if they do it then their chances of surviving increases exponentially.

    Proper leadership is another reason why Imperial worlds are usually Daemonified more often as far as I can tell. There tends to be either control by an undivided follower or a warband following a specific God, so the world can be changed without major protest from the others.
     
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    One of the downsides of daemon worlds is that it's easy for an army of daemons to invade them. Any kind of Chaos empire needs a level of stability, and for that it's better to just get corrupted worlds rather than daemon worlds which serve pretty well as invasion portals for your enemies. Honestly, I couldn't tell you how Valinor would be able to stay an Abomination world following the destruction of the majority of its armed forces.
     
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    Andres110 said:
    Honestly, I couldn't tell you how Valinor would be able to stay an Abomination world following the destruction of the majority of its armed forces.
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    Presumably because they've still got plenty of cannon fodder left over from the waves.

    Its not going to stop an invasion, but it will slow it down while what ever's in charge tries to regain favour.
     
    Andres110 said:
    Honestly, I couldn't tell you how Valinor would be able to stay an Abomination world following the destruction of the majority of its armed forces.
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    Because as a daemon world, it's already infested with daemons as its main defensive military force - you don't need constant rituals to maintain daemons on a daemon world. So the planet would be infested to the gills with angyls and the local warp would be colored a corrupted gold, so they'd have an advantage over any other daemon types that would try to invade unless overwhelming force was used.
     
    I do wonder if Valinor (the world) would end up changing hands once we take out Valinor (the empire). I imagine the empire provides a focused stream of souls and faith to buttress it against other demons, but if that support is removed the world may end up being conqoured by another of the ruinous powers. I imaging Tzeentch would really like a FOB for his efforts to remove us from avernus before we doom the universe.
     
    Sakarians and the Idra'Sakar Empire
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    • Sakarians and the Idra'Sakar Empire​


    The Idra'Sakar Empire is an Avernite civilisation. In most Avernite empires, the constituent peoples that live beneath them are all of the same race, but while the Idra'Sakar Empire does have a "principal" race in the form of the sakarians, many other races and peoples are also part of it, living as full citizens.

    The current ruler of the Empire is Empress Miryna, successor to Emperor Valas, who died during the latest Daemonic Incursion.

    ***
    The Imperium and its remnants believed for centuries that the first and second non-native colonisations of Avernus were by humans, but in truth, only the first part of that assessment was accurate. Between the the Dark Age of Technology and the Age of the Imperium, another race would make Avernus its home, a race whose descendents would become the sakarians.

    Much as humans born on Avernus can be considered a non-native species, so can the sakarians. Sakarians are descended from a race of warp entities related to vampires who similarly had psychic powers, shapeshifting abilities, and a dependence on the lifeforce of mortals, though that is where their similarities ended. They drained smaller quantities of their victims' lifeforce at a time but did so over a longer period of time, had a narrower but stronger set of powers based on social allure, were unburdened by inherent megalomania and misanthrophy, and had very different true forms (which in physical combat did not compare favourably).

    These pre-sakarians were driven almost entirely extinct with the birth of Slaanesh. She considered them her property, and so the vast majority were hunted down and eaten and/or corrupted and turned into daemonettes. The only place where they survived in significant numbers was Avernus. Avernus was very hostile to Chaos, which granted some measure of protection from the forces of Slaanesh. Furthermore, its warp-touched nature meant that not only did they require inordinately less life essence to maintain themselves on the material plane, the warp-touched flora and fauna meant they could gain much more sustenance from eating regular food. On Avernus, they needed to drain only a thimble of life essence and do so only every few years to survive and keep themselves out of the Warp, where daemons would hunt them.

    Over time, they would evolve into modern sakarians, stabilising into true souls and gaining mortal bodies in the process. On the downside, their shapeshifting and social allure powers were atrophied to nearly nothing (but not entirely gone and they could be trained) and only their most psychically powerful would be true psykers, with less inherent skill at that. On the upside, they could reproduce much more quickly. Additionally, they lost all the inherent traits of being warp entities while gaining all the inherent traits of having true, stable souls.

    Due to not truly being native to Avernus, a sakarian's susceptibility to Chaos corruption is closer to that of a human's than that of Avernite peoples.

    ***
    A common problem that empires in general have to deal with is internal strife caused by friction between different peoples, caused by a number of reasons from historical grievances to cultural clashes, religious differences, and more. The Idra'Sakar Empire is no different in this regard, having not only the same issues between different groups of the same race, but additional issues caused by people of entirely different races having to live together within the same overarching civilisation. The way the Idra'Sakar Empire is made up of one primary race and multiple other races is similar to the Tau Empire, but in regards to how its various peoples from conflicting with each other too much, it's more reminiscent of the Imperium of Man.

    The lands and peoples of the Idra'Sakar Empire are locked in an eternal war from within, without, and beyond its borders. Military dominance has allowed the Empire to survive for as long as it has, but only unity of its peoples has allowed its strength to be effectively wielded wherever it needs to be. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses, as do the enemies that the various peoples have to fight, and by co-existing with each other, each of the peoples can use and be used by others to fight the battles they are more suited for. Furthermore, the Empire can provide a greater amount of sheer force than local polities may be capable of creating on their own. For a people to abandon their commitments to the Empire is to abandon the aid the Empire in turn provides, which can easily prove catastrophic given the pressures of Avernus.

    The military is the carrot that encourages loyalty but it's also the stick that enforces it. In the places where it's feasible for foreign armies to provide the garrison, large-scale rebellion is hard to pull off due to the largest nearby concentration of dedicated warriors not being loyal to whatever or whoever is causing the rebellions. In places where a foreign garrison is unfeasible for whatever reason, rebellion is easier, but the Empire has enough assets that it can typically put together an army group capable of punishing the treason within the same generation.

    Despite the fact that the Empire has varied different races with their own histories, cultures, mythologies, and religions, there exists a kind of vague, underlying level of religious and cultural pseudo-unity. While conflict inevitably occurs between (and, of course, within) cultures and religions, it's more or less either neutral to or to the benefit of pan-imperial unity. There are two factors contributing to this. The first factor is simple natural selection; the aspects of religions or cultures that drive adherents to advocate disunity or create undue amounts of strife typically disappear as those followers are executed for treason. The second factor that's had an effect on the cultural unity of the Idra'Sakar Empire is convenience. The less xenophobic a given group of people is, the easier access they have to outside aid, trade, and Imperial attention of the positive kind, while typically attracting less Imperial attention of the negative kind from breaking the peace. This leads to greater prosperity, which encourages peoples to get along with each other, especially since Avernus is a world where you often need to get every advantage you can get in order to survive.

    Legally, every recognised people in the Idra'Sakar Empire is represented by a single individual. Whether that individual is merely the spokesperson for a group of government officials or an outright ruler or something else, the Empire only ever has to deal with a single person when managing any given people, which simplifies some of the issues that come up ruling a civilisation made up of entirely different species. While any given people is free to make up their own laws that apply to themselves and those who enter their territory, all laws come second before the laws of the Idra'Sakar Empire, which focus on ensuring that the various peoples of the Empire can coexist and work together to a reasonable degree. Breaking imperial laws draws imperial attention, which is a dangerous thing to do.

    One of the things keeping the Idra'Sakar Empire together is the Valshartha - the Imperial Palace - under which can be found the Empire's most important assets and which is almost a culture separate from Idra'Sakar and wider sakarian culture. The Xundari works in a similar fashion to the Avernite Arbites, recruiting, training, and deploying spies, judicars, and other agents within the Empire's borders to enforce imperial law. The Sea'nashar, formed as it is of heroes from all across the Empire, are sometimes used as quasi-ambassadors both by their own peoples and the Valshartha. The royal family provides a variety of options for dealing with internal polities while the threat posed by the Empire's trump cards - the Imperial Guard and the Emperor (or Empress) - is often enough to discourage strife where the military alone is insufficient.

    One of the most important things that's helped bind the peoples of the Idra'Sakar Empire together is time. As time goes by, the various peoples get used to each other and they spend time fighting alongside each other against common enemies, which is typically a rather strong binder.

    ***
    Having a wide variety of different troops to combat Avernus' various threats is not the only advantage the Idra'Sakar Empire has gained from having so many different peoples and races under its protection. A very significant factor has been the technology and magic the Empire as a whole has access to from all the peoples within it.

    It's not uncommon for the sapient races of Avernus to specialise in certain areas when it comes to psychic work, typically - but not always - characterised or enabled by their own powers and physiology. The same goes for the various races that are part of the Idra'Sakar Empire. While some races keep the secrets of their particular specialist schools of magic for themselves for whatever reason, their existence is still beneficial to the Empire because of the results they provide. Furthermore, some races are willing to be more open about their own particular specialties, which has contributed to a greater sum total understanding of magic within the Empire, even as these races are still usually the primary and best practitioners of their schools.

    Technology is another thing that Avernite races tend to develop over time, with the specific technologies they develop evolving in much the same ways as other races in the galaxy. Their own particular needs, circumstances, available resources, culture, biology, and more have all contributed to the technological development or lack thereof of Avernite civilisations. Technological development is very slow overall for a variety of reasons, such as reliance on magic, moving resources away from technological development, and disruption by the wildlife. By the standards of most non-elder Avernite civilisations, the Idra'Sakar Empire is quite advanced, having a high Feudal level of technology. This can be attributed to two primary factors: size and dedicated researchers. In the case of the former, it is simple to understand. On Avernus, a lot of knowledge gets lost as a result of the death and destruction that the wildlife causes. Because of the size of the Empire, however, recorded knowledge and bearers of knowledge can be found a great distance away from where that knowledge is most found, so even if the wildlife destroys those places, people, or things where most of the knowledge is stored, there's usually a "backup" of sorts, allowing for knowledge that would otherwise be lost to survive. In the case of the dedicated researchers, that requires more explanation, especially to illuminate just how they came to be.

    When it comes to human civilisations, dedicated researchers only come into existence once certain thresholds are met. As information exchange networks increase and improvements are made to communications and transportation, technological growth speeds up. Once a civilisation's capacity for technological growth reaches a certain point, it becomes economically justified to spend resources with the specific intent of furthering the civilisation's understanding of nature and creating new technologies. For most Avernite civilisations this is also true, but the wildlife makes it very difficult for any civilisation to reach these thresholds, which is a major contributor for why most Avernite civilisations are as technologically backwards as they are compared to other civilisations in the galaxy. This has been no less true in the case of the Idra'Sakar Empire and all the various polities and peoples within it, yet they unintentionally worked around this problem and developed dedicated researchers anyway, thanks to its unique nature.

    As stated earlier, Avernite peoples have a tendency to develop technologies, and how they do so depends on a number of different variables. The peoples that are part of the Empire - both before and after joining - have been no different in this regard, and the Empire had a wide variety of technologies within its borders. The problem remained, however, that regular information and technology exchanges remained difficult and infrequent because of the wildlife, so these technologies typically stayed within the peoples they originated from. The natural spread of technology could not take place except very slowly, but the potential advantages of completely integrating all these technologies throughout the breadth of the Empire were rather visible to the reigning emperor at the time. He established the Zanil Nac'lana and charged them with collecting together the various technologies within the Empire, understanding them, and finding out how to apply them beyond where they originated. Several years later, after gaining additional funding and growing as an organisation, they began making meaningful progress.

    The original plan for the organisation was to disband it after it completed its goal of collecting and fully integrating all the technologies within the Idra'Sakar Empire, but this plan would be altered. The job was much larger than originally anticipated, extending far beyond the original decade it was originally supposed to take with the organisation continuing to develop over time. Having acquired large amounts of knowledge and gaining a lot of experience with the understanding and application of technologies, some of its members began getting ideas, thinking of ways to use technologies in different ways, combining them together, and thinking of potential ways to improve upon them. These ideas made it up the chain and a few were presented to the emperor as ones that might be worthwhile for the Nac'lana to investigate. These ideas were approved, and while the organisation continued with their main mission as a primary focus, the development of new technologies would sometimes take place as well.

    Eventually, the Zanil Nac'lana completed the goal they were originally founded for, having grown to a modestly large and prestigious organisation in its own right along the way. Instead of being disbanded, the organisation simply continued to function, focusing on developing new technologies as they had done for a long time by then, contributing greatly to the continued technological advancement of the Idra'Sakar Empire. It's with their help that the volcano forges and the underways which cross the empire were able to be built.

    ***
    Culture in the Idra'Sakar Empire is largely local, with little overarching culture that a majority of the various peoples fall under, bar sharing some symbols and colours representative of the Empire. That said, such overarching culture is not entirely absent, and there is such a thing as Imperial culture, which has been slowly growing and developing over time, especially as the ability for peoples to communicate and interact with each other increases with improving technology and growing populations. Of particular mention are the largest cultural touchstones which serve to underpin this Imperial culture.

    The first of such touchstones is the position of the emperor. All emperors and empresses have been sakarians, but they all live much longer than the average sakarians and live in Valshartha, where the culture of its various inhabitants is a fair bit different from that of sakarians as a whole. This serves to separate them for the rest of the sakarians somewhat, so the opinions on the emperor by any given subject of the Empire are less tainted by their perception of the sakarian race as a whole. The position of the emperor represents a long history of effective rule, holds an immense concentration of force, and encourages trust that the highest levels of government are pure and committed to the empire as a whole. The position is commonly seen as the keystone holding together the Idra'Sakar Empire, and that without it the whole system would collapse.

    The second of the touchstones is the Dark Age, which began in a certain year in the history of the Empire and ended a few centuries later. It's called the Dark Age because next to no information about any aspect of the Idra'Sakar Empire at the time has survived regarding it into modern times. This alone would be very suspicious, but it's made even moreso by how a kind of divination "fog" hangs around the era, which even the best seers of the Empire have been unable to pierce. What few scraps of information are available have only been recovered in expeditions into the Soul-Scoured Wastes, scraps which suggest the Empire during this time interacted with it in some way, but that's all. With the histories of the various peoples of the time also obscured, it's a reminder that for good or for ill, this histories of the people within the Idra'Sakar Empire are part of the history of the Idra'Sakar Empire.

    The third cultural touchstone of the Idra'Sakar Empire isn't institutional or historical as the above examples, but a series of stories - the Journeys of Gylo. The series is about a sapient bird-like creature whose egg hatched in a time after the entire rest of his race was destroyed. It begins with Gylo exploring the world and finding out about his heritage. After that he tries to find survivors, only to finally realise and accept that he is the last. From then on, he dedicates himself to learning about his people and completing their stories. He speaks with their ghosts and puts them to rest, recovers what remnants of the products of his people yet remain in the world, and redeems his race, for as he discovers during his journeys their destruction was partially justified. The final parts of Gylo's story has him build a tomb where the remnants and records of his people would be kept, their story preserved. His life's work complete, he lives out the rest of his life as a traveller, seeing new lands and sharing the story of his life to others along the way. To most of the peoples of Avernus, it's a good story with many different ways to look at it. It's the same with the peoples if the Idra'Sakar Empire, but one particular theme that resonates throughout it is that one day, the only thing that might be left of your people is what others remember of it.

    ***
    At the core of the Idra'Sakar Empire is the city of Idra'Sakar, the largest city in the Empire and its capital. It sits at the foot of the mountain the Palace is partially built into. The Vakuirth River runs through the city, providing fresh water for the city's use and easy transportation into the nearby sea. As with every sedentary settlement on Avernus, it is very heavily fortified to protect against wildlife assault from every angle, with multiple sets of massive walls, high towers with artillery pieces to defend against airborne enemies, magically-powered Titanslayer Ballistas on each side of the city, and a series of grates, gates, traps, and other defences to kill anything that tries to invade through the Vakuirth.

    At the centre of the city is a grand fortress, the Idra'Sakar Citadel, and is the third most secure fortress in the entirety of the Empire. Within it beats the legislative, bureaucratic, and political heart of Idra'Sakar, managed by the steward of the city in the emperor's name. For countless generations, it has stood strong in the face of many assaults that have managed to breach past the outer walls. In the entirety of the Empire's recorded history, it has fallen only once, its protective wards and the strength of its walls failing under mass daemonic assault and traitorous action during the last daemonic incursion, and even then there were still holdouts of resistance by the time of the incursion's end.

    Taain is the name of the mountain that the Valshartha is partially built into, with majority of the Palace within the mountain. The palace's defensibility and security makes the Idra'Sakar seem like flimsiplast in comparison, ranking in as the strongest fortress in the entire Idra'Sakar Empire. Its walls and wards are inordinately stronger than the Citadel, capable of withstanding fire from even Titanslayer Ballistas indefinitely. This is because the entire palace is made out of khalt, a stone-like material that's ludicrously expensive to make and normally only used to hold relatively small things that are very unsafe and very powerful, such as daemon princes.

    The Imperial Palace is split into two parts: the Outer Palace and the Inner Palace. The Outer Palace is the part of the Valshartha that's outside of Taain and is the more "public" part of the Valshartha. In it can be found the throne room where the emperor holds court, the Xundari headquarters, and the personal living areas of the Sea'nashar. The Inner Palace is part of the Valsharta inside of Taain. Only the emperor, the royal family, and the Inner Palace's servants - the vanr can enter inside. The Inner Palace is the home of the emperor and the royal family, and it's also where infants are taken to be raised and trained as vanr.

    Far inside the Inner Palace can be found the Taain Forges, which are powered by one of the natural wonders of Avernus - the Ircha'nota, a font of warp-drenched fire and energy coming from far below the ground. Not only does it allow for more powerful magical items to be created there than anywhere else, it allows non-psykers to make magic items that would normally require psykers to make. It requires increasingly greater levels of skill to harness greater amounts of the font's energy as well as stronger armour to withstand it. As a vanr warpsmith increases in skill, they will make themselves better armour as a sign of rank and to venture closer to the centre of the Ircha'nota, where they can make increasingly more powerful works.

    ***
    The position of emperor is passed down along a hereditary line of succession, however the full process is a fair amount more complicated than the crown simply being passed down to one of the emperor's children upon their death.

    When a reigning emperor gives a sakarian baby young enough to not yet be sapient some of their blood to drink, a metaphysical seed is planted and a bond is established. Through continued reinforcement of the bond (such as through training, parenting, and other such things), the seed is nourished and it grows. Through insufficient reinforcement, the bond frays and the seed withers, with no possibility of restoration if it dies completely. Once the seed has grown enough, it will dissolve and strengthen the sakarian's body and soul, as well as priming it to become an emperor.

    When an emperor dies, an ancient being covered in form-concealing armour and of a nature unknown even to the emperors called the Cupbearer comes forth from deep within the Imperial Palace bearing a chalice. This chalice is filled with blood that magically refills when empty and which the dead emperor's children will drink from. When they do, they will be judged by a metaphysical representation of all the previous emperors, and if judged unworthy they will die then and there. (For this reason, the children are allowed to refuse to drink.) If judged worthy, they will become the new emperor, after which they will spill some of their blood into the chalice and the Cupbearer will return from wherever it came from. If more than one is worthy, the most worthy becomes emperor while the remainder are knocked into comas that last anywhere between one month and a full year.

    The new emperor gains greatly increased physical and magical power and two new abilities. The first ability is to use their spilled blood to anchor psychic powers, allowing for safe overcharge at the cost of increased charge time. The second ability is the ability to eat souls, whereupon the emperor gains their skills and memories, like a Space Marine's Omophagea except to a greater extent. The greater the combined quantity and quality of souls, the longer it takes to digest, and the more the emperor's personality and sanity is warped while the souls are being digested.

    In addition to the personal power an emperor receives upon ascension, they also gain unrestricted access to the Inner Palace's archives, (which includes information and knowledge penned down by previous emperors), its vaults (a series of segmented areas filled with things ranging from sealed daemons to superweapons), and the emperor's armour, which has been passed down from emperor to emperor for generations. Its durability and the unknown nature of the metal it's made out of is such that its ability to self-repair is the only possible way to repair the armour at all. In all of the Empire's recorded history, it has taken extreme damage only three times. The third time was during the last Daemonic Incursion, where the daemon the emperor fought proved to be of immense power and had anti-armour weapons. The first and second time are more significant, providing rare clues to what happened during the Dark Age. The records say that the first time the armour took extreme damage was when it took a direct hit from the breath weapon of a Warp Dragon, and the second time was the result of battle damage inflicted by the Ancient Wanderer. Perhaps somewhat intriguingly, it seems it was the same person who wore the armour in both events.

    It is possible for a sakarian who hasn't been seeded to succeed in becoming the emperor. The reason the seeding is important is that without it, even if the candidate is considered worthy, they may still die anyway. The seed ensures that if the candidate is worthy that they are guaranteed to survive.

    Only one emperor can exist at a time.

    The children of emperors are considered members of the royal family. Collectively, they have a broad range of skills which make them useful agents of the Idra'Sakar Empire.

    ***
    There are many threats that the Idra'Sakar Empire has to withstand. The wildlife is by far the most common threat to the lives and well-being of the Empire's citizens, but there are some particularly notable examples as well as other major threats to the safety and security of the Empire.

    Titans are what the Empire calls megafauna. They come from many different places, such as the ground, the sea, and the air. The first line of defence against them is a kind of gigantic ballista called a Titanslayer Ballista, called such because they're ballistas meant to slay titans. Each one is typically built on top of a fortress and provides a measure of protection against approaching titans. The threat of titan assault is great enough that all major settlements are either within firing range or fleeing range of a Titanslayer Ballista.

    Because sakarians are not true native-borns of Avernus, they have much the same problems with Chaos as humans do, with cults and rogue psykers being significant problems they're forced to combat. The sheer damage they've taken from Chaos has led to a similarly strong level of hatred towards Chaos as can be found in Avernite humans. This hatred was strengthened in the wake of the last daemonic incursion, where a great many daemons descended on the Indra'Sakar Empire as a whole and especially on the sakarians, being both more vulnerable to Chaos corruption and the last descendents of those who got away from Slaanesh. During that event they managed to kill the emperor and almost the entirety of the royal family, who were all away from the Valshartha at the time.

    The Soul-Scoured Wastes are a stretch of utter wasteland, with burned, blackened land and where the space is known to distort and fray. Some of the most dangerous wildlife and warp entities originate from there. Between the Idra'Sakar Empire and the Soul-Scoured Wastes is a no man's land, and the border separating the no man's land from the Empire is where the second-strongest fortress in the Idra'Sakar Empire is built. Its purpose is to monitor the Wastes and hold the line against anything that spawns from there.

    Finally, there are Termite Wars to the south, where miniature psykers and war machines fight eternally. Occasionally the fights spill over into imperial territory.

    ***
    There are a number of elite warrior groups within the Idra'Sakar Empire. These fill a number of niches in the military power of the Empire and further strengthen its ability to combat its enemies. Here are some of the more notable ones.

    The most powerful and most prominent group of elites in the Empire is the Imperial Guard, who are drawn from the vanr. They receive the best training and the best wargear outside of all bar the emperor themselves. Half their number reside within the Inner Palace, protecting it and never leaving it save when members rotate out with members of the other half of the Guard, who accompany the emperor. This other half's duty is to preserve the emperor's life, but above that it's their job to kill the emperor if they go completely insane from eating too many souls too quickly or they fall to Chaos.

    The Cotix race produces some of the best fighters in the Idra'Sakar Empire. Their race has evolved so that each and every member of their race is an excellent physical combatant before even accounting for experience and training. They typically serve as heavy infantry, heavy archers, bodyguards, and champions. Their best warriors wear no armour but are some of the most skilled and physically fit warriors in the entirety of the Empire.

    Towards the bottom of the old Cenga Caves, there lives a tribe of spider-like humanoids called the Selikae. Their first appearance was a hooded diplomat who approached an adventuring child of the reigning emperor and, on behalf of her people, offered the Empire their allegiance. Their stated purpose was that they wanted protection in case they were ever attacked, but ultimately there's still a great amount of suspicion in regards their motives by members outside the Valshartha, exacerbated by the distrust and even outright hatred in response to their spider-like nature. No one trades with them, no one goes to their territory but to retrieve taxes, and likewise none of their people ever enters another people's territory, bar the military aid they are required to send. This military aid comes in the form of the Spinerettes - an elite group of highly agile warriors who specialise in high-verticality environments and night fighting.

    ***
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    ***
    Deep within the Valshartha, past the Ircha'nota, accessed through hidden tunnels and ancient spellwork, there is a room kept secret from all, even from the emperor and the Guard.

    The room and the passageways are constructed of a material transparent in the mind's eye, invisible to Sight and Prophecy.

    Within the room are chains, binding together a slade coffin bearing white sigils of a near-forgotten script.

    The thing inside the coffin is kept from dying through runework, and through runework is kept ever from healing, from thinking, from willing, from waking.

    Once a year, its heart beats, and the sigils turn red.

    Every year, the Cupbearer places a vial to the sigils, and as the sigils turn white, a single drop of red blood drips down into the vial.
     
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